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I have a Product Search on my site that has a total of over 100,000 items from all merchants. Right now I am reading the feeds on my site from a different txt file for each merchant. It takes around 13 sec to search all the txt feed files. Would I be better off (and faster) to uses either CSV, ms-accees or sql to read my data from? If so which would be better??

As you are discovering, it is not advisable to try to read live data from flat text file of that size. I recommend that you parse it into an SQL or MySQL format and then you will have several options that can speed up your searches.

What are you currently developing in? (I work in a mix of ASP and PHP) That is the server side script that will actually talk to the database. It seems that PHP is most often the tool of choice for many around here...

Keep in mind that performance opinions are just that - opinions. If they are both the same price you might want to weigh them both and form your own opinion. SQL Server is definitely easier to work with if you are using ASP or ASP.NET.

Once you get SQL Server optimized and you start using stored procedures you will see very good performance out of it. My SQL Server sites run rings around my MySQL sites. MySQL is probably good for a beginner, but keep your options open.

Something else you might want to look at if you need very good DB performance (Despite which one you use). See if your hosting company can give you your database system on a different box than your website runs from. So your web server would be on server1 and your database would be on server2.

I currently use http://www.3shost.com/ for hosting my current feed. Right now I am just collecting information and plan on starting to play with SQL after my holidays. Thank you for the offer, I may ask you a question or two after I start using mysql.

When I said "My SQL Sites.." I was referring to MY as in the ones I own! That was a good catch - I worded that poorly.

All -

MS SQL Express (the lite version of MS SQL) is a free download and free to use just like some version of MySQL. Both have paid and free versions.

Open source or not does not matter unless you actually plan on getting in anc modifying the source code to your database server. I'd be very surprised if anybody here is doing that.

What should matter most is cost and performance, and those two priorities might flip flop depending on who you are. Don't pick something because it is free, open source, proprietary, or what CNET tells you. Picks something that solves your pain.